


Hollow

by Liivrah



Category: One Piece
Genre: ASL Brothers, Dark, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Luffy Being Luffy, Portgas D. Ace Lives, Reincarnation, Sabo (One Piece) is a Little Shit, Strong Female Characters, a healthy dose of angst, oc is very mad with death, surprisingly serious, updates will not be frequent, with little sprinkles of fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 09:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30087303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liivrah/pseuds/Liivrah
Summary: They don't take the hand that has been offered to them in the darkness, and it comes with a price.Salem plans on becoming a pirate, it is a wonderful excuse to be hopelessly selfish in everything she does. Everyone expects that pirates do nothing but take and take, so maybe Death should expect that too.[WIP]
Relationships: still thinking about it - Relationship
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

_// Shape without form, shade without colour,_  
_Paralysed force, gesture without motion //_

There are no hands in front of them. They had done the action, the muscle-deep movement of their elbows, expecting to see their slender fingers appear.

There was nothing. 

Perhaps there has always been nothing?

_// Let me be no nearer_  
_In death's dream kingdom //_

Wherever they are, it is vast and wide, impossible in its comprehension. If they couldn’t see, couldn’t hold onto that one sense with a white-knuckled grip, they would have already gone insane. In this nothingness, they knew that they had been there long, hours upon hours of silence. 

Their eyes had always begun to make shaky lines, tracing over nothing. 

They knew nothing except that it was comfortable in its familiar feel.

_// And voices are_  
_In the wind's singing_  
_More distant and more solemn_  
_Than a fading star //_

There isn’t any wind, no sunlight to warm their probable existence. Nothing upon them to reflect the darkness back onto a surface.

But there are whispers. They listen, hanging onto it with bated breath. They cannot understand a single word of it, a dead language to suit their very void of existence. 

If they knew where their eyes even were, they would cry.

_// Remember us-if at all-not as lost_  
_Violent souls, but only_  
_As the hollow men_  
_The stuffed men //_

There is no memory. There isn’t a single shred of understanding, only a simple feeling of comfort. 

Like always, there isn’t any explanation for comfort, either. Because as the void continues to trail cold kisses on the skin that used to exist, they want to scream. 

They already know that nobody would listen. There is something here, something old and unfortunate, but they wouldn’t care. 

_// This is the dead land_  
_This is cactus land_  
_Here the stone images_  
_Are raised, here they receive_  
_The supplication of a dead man's hand_  
_Under the twinkle of a fading star //_

There is a hand. 

A bone hand. 

It clicks in its use, cold and unforgiving, ready to hand out judgement with deafening silence and a whisper. 

The hand stays there for a very long time. The desire to take it bubbles within them, shaking and turning when it’s quota has yet to be met. 

They don’t take it. They never take it. They may have had hands once, especially if they had a habit of looking at them, but they didn’t here. If they had thought to take it, maybe they would have been given some.

But they didn’t have any need for skeleton hands. What they wanted was the light, freedom from a suffocating void that had yet to fall.

So they would wait. 

_// In this last of meeting places_  
_We grope together_  
_And avoid speech_  
_Gathered on this beach of the tumid river //_

The void has become crowded. 

Crowded in its room, crowded in its whispering and lingering touches. There is an incredible amount of stubbornness in them, a denial to not fall and become part of the void they may or may not exist in.

The hand has gone now. They weren’t looking when it left.

Their eyes had been closed for some time now, although there was no difference in what they were seeing. 

_// Between the desire_  
_And the spasm_  
_Between the potency_  
_And the existence_  
_Between the essence_  
_And the descent_  
_Falls the Shadow //_

Becoming a real thing again isn’t a quick experience.

It’s painful. It only becomes painful when they settle, only becomes painful when they notice that they should be in pain, that something like this should be expected to come with a shock.

They lay down for a short time in comparison compared to the nothingness before. But the fact that they have a body, one that they can learn from and fingers that can move or lungs that fill with beloved oxygen is nothing short of a miracle.

But they don’t think of miracles. They want nothing to do with miracles or their certain death and an afterlife. They have had enough of all that.

Their wrists click when they raise them high, and they delight in it. The wait had been worth it. The stubbornness had won out. 

Or this is how it was always going to be, and they simply prolonged the inevitable. Either way, they were now safe, wrapped up in a threadbare blanket and head underneath a pillow.

It isn’t until dawn filters through the dirty window in their small attic room that they remember that they were in fact a person. That they had memories once, even if they were a struggle to remember and that more than all that, they had an identity.

It was much different from the thirty-six-year-old she had died in. A simple death, one with falling falling falling and then nothing else. This body was very young, but also very female. The relief was staggering. 

The smell was not.

“A farmer’s daughter, huh?” Her voice came out fine, but it was like she had never spoken in the first place. Their voice was somewhere else, echoing in a home that would never be hers. 

Still, she could deal with that. The dead girl felt sorry for the tiny girl she had stolen a body from, a secret impostor comfortable in the barn. What she felt wasn’t regret, however. She had wanted nothing more than to live, and that’s what she got.

_// We are the hollow men_  
_We are the stuffed men //_

Her hands reached up, up and up until they reached her chest. It was thumping, right?

_// There are no eyes here_  
_In this valley of dying stars_  
_In this hollow valley_  
_This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms //_

**There is no beat.**

And for the first time in an impossible amount of time, of dawn and dusk stretching on and on for a time until everything was dust again, she sobbed. 

Perhaps she never stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem and the title are from T S Elliot, suitably called 'The Hollow Men'. It influenced this story and it's such a good piece.


	2. Chapter 2

There are so many people in front of her. Most noticeable are her guardians, who happily chat like their real daughter isn’t dead. 

But there is no name for them. It’s somewhere in her head, slotted into a library she has yet to sort through. There are so many books to read and she wishes there had been more time.

They’ve moved her. The little girl’s parents. They’ve moved so she can see concerned residents of their village, see people she’s stolen from. They wave off her strange behaviour as recovering from a fever, surprisingly blunt in their comments. This little body is a sickly one, or it was a sickly one. Although she can see the sun outside and the air itself is warm enough to tell her about the climate, her skin is still a pale colour. 

The body works, though. It's missing a big part of it and she has to do her very best to distract herself about it, but she simply can't. There isn't a single word close enough to describe it, only that she has yet to stop feeling sick.

They call her Salem, and she thinks that it’s a wonderful name. Her small hands are gripping onto her shorts, keeping her from reaching up and grasping onto her chest. 

_Why isn’t there anything?_

There hasn't been a single heartbeat from the moment where she woke up and where she is now. Salem can only guess that without a heart, none of her organs work like they're supposed to either. But when she pinches herself, a new habit she has developed in the last hour to keep her steady, she feels plenty of pain. 

They took something from her. It’s the only, possible thing that could have happened. She had lingered too long, paid the toll in order to keep who she used to be. The anger _burns._ They took her life and none of it was ever good enough? They had torn little pieces of sanity away from her and stashed it away, but that pay wasn't good enough either. She wished that she was back in that void so she could scream without alerting all the people paying her goodwill.

Or maybe a doctor she could swear secrecy from. A scan or something would be nice. Something logical and medical to distance herself from all this craziness that feels like it should all be a horrible nightmare. But Salem can still taste the void on her tongue, a bitterness like cherry which doesn't move from the very back even as she tries to scrape it off with her front teeth.

There is a lady called Makino here. Her parents have left them, ready to tend to the farm they own. She’s agreed to look after her for the day, to keep an eye on her to make sure the fever doesn’t come back. 

Salem doesn’t know how she’s breathing, never mind think of ways of how a fever will come to bother her. All she knows is that there is this horrible, horrible _gap_ in the space behind her ribs and that it infects everywhere else with its void. Everything else feels small in comparison.

Still, Makino brings her to the bar. It’s a sweet thing, well-loved in its use and mostly empty, Salem reasons that it’ll get busy when it’s later. 

There is a boy at the bar. The moment Makino steps through the door, he perks up and jumps off the stool, running towards Makino with a wide grin. When he notices her, the grin falls, replaced with a confused frown. 

The frown is adorable, scrunched up the way it is. She wonders if she had any kids once upon a time, on whether they withered with time like she did. It’s a horrible thought, and she quickly banishes it. 

The gaze lingers on his hair.

 _There should be a hat there,_ she thinks. She isn’t too sure of where the thought comes from, but she’s certain of it. It’s the most certain she’s felt ever since she’s existed again. There isn't enough time to sort through memories or put them into categories. Hiding somewhere dark and warm is next on her list. 

“Who are you?” His tone is brash and she wouldn’t say it’s aggressive, but it certainly makes her uncomfortable. “You sound weird!” 

Did she sound weird? It’s not the strangest thing she’s heard. _You would sound weird if you didn’t have a heartbeat, either._ It’s an interesting piece of information to take note of, however. Whoever this boy is, he seems to have some insane senses. _Is it normal?_ She certainly doubts it.

“Sorry?” She phrases it like a question, mostly because she honestly has no idea what he’s on about. “I’m Salem.”

“Salem?” A strange look flickers over his face and it makes her nervous. “You aren’t Salem.”

Her entire body freezes up and the empty space of her heart is ever-present. Because he's right, she _isn't_ the Salem they know, an impostor in plain sight in their peaceful town. It takes a good moment to gather herself back together, to not let herself fall where she is and shout about it, shout about how nothing makes sense and how mad she is for losing her treasure. The heart is such an important part of the body, keeping the rest of it together and all of that was gone. She can't think about all the metaphorical meanings of that, can't think about whether she's even human anymore.

She knows the answer, after all.

This boy knows, but he doesn’t know enough to quite understand. Whatever he hears is something that guides him, maybe something that he’s been born with. She can work with it, but not quite here. 

After all, she isn’t quite comfortable with the curious stare at her back. What they've said so far is rather quiet with Makino stood at the entrance rather than next to her, and Salem can't help feel relieved that she isn't so close.

“Miss Makino…” her voice trails off, trying to come up with ways on how to act like a child. This body hasn’t got a single memory of how she acted before. “Can we go play outside for a little?” 

Her voice must be squeaky enough because Makino relaxes, a peaceful smile on her face. “Sure! Just don’t go too far, okay?” 

Salem beams at her and grabs the boy, tugging him along with enough force for it to be considered playful but enough so he doesn’t have a chance to run for it. The last thing she wants is for him to start screaming.

She lets go of him when they get far enough away, and she stumbles to explain herself. He’s still watching her and his eyes are unsettlingly large on a child’s face. 

“I’m, well... I didn’t use to be Salem, but I’m Salem now. I’m really sorry if you were close to her.” She does her best to come across as sympathetic, because she truly is, even if she doesn’t feel that bad for being a body-snatcher. It's almost upsetting that she doesn't feel worse, making some poor, dying girl swap places with her in the nothingness she wanted nothing more than to burn out of her mind.

“I didn't like her!” He explains, and something eases in her. No crying here, then. “But where did she go?” She still finds it a little weird that he just accepts it, but maybe he’s just the type.

It was best to just come out with it. “She died, I think. She’s not coming back, so I’m going to look after what she left behind.” And by that, she meant her body. Salem wasn't about to go looking after a farm any time soon, she had bigger things to do. Like trying to figure out how to summon godly beings and shake them up a bit for stealing from lowly mortals.

The silence stretches on for a while, she has no idea what to say and the boy next to her is filtering through it all with a heavy frown on his face. She wouldn’t be surprised at all if steam came out of his ears. 

“Is that why you sound weird?” There is no way she’s going to ask what she sounds like. If it sounds like anything close to nothingness, she’d cry. 

“Yeah, I lost a part of myself, so I’ll sound okay when I get it back.” Because she would. There was no doubt in that. It was an impossible thing, but Salem had just reincarnated so she was feeling rather impossible.

“Oh okay! I don’t get it, but I’m Monkey D. Luffy!” His grin is wide and Salem smiles just at the sight of it. It looks a little like it hurts. “Do I still call you Salem?” 

She nods. “Yeah, it’s a good name. It’s nice to meet you, Luffy.” If he doesn’t get it, that’s fine. She can try and come up with a better explanation later. 

His presence is surprisingly bright. It takes up the entire street their on, and Salem doesn’t mind basking in it a little. She listens to his chatting, and she can’t help but feel that Luffy was lonely. They find a hill at the very back of their village, overlooking the sea and all the narrow houses. Luffy has already claimed the highest branch on the nearest tree, grin wide and the wind ruffling his clothes. The height suits him rather well.

From what she can gather, there weren’t many children in their village. The original Salem hadn’t been nice either. She can't blame the boy for being lonely, because she was just as lonely as he was. Everything blurred together, the time in nothingness appearing to become shorter and shorter, but she knew that wherever she had been, it had been long enough to watch the next batch of souls pass on like she was supposed too.

It was fine if he was a child, at this moment of time, so was she. She knew she would never come close to feeling like one, but it was nice to have this bundle of ignorance and innocence with her. He was the chaotic sort, hanging off that branch with no amount of fear. Salem was simply waiting for his vest to get caught on it.

Maybe with him, she’d feel a little less lonely. Maybe he’d be enough to forget about the missing part of her for now. 

“I’m gonna be a pirate!” He comes out with and Salem’s eyes don’t sparkle at all. 

“This world has pirates? That’s the coolest thing _ever_.” She might have died at a rather young age, far enough to be well-established but not so far that she was ready to go, but who hadn’t pretended to be a pirate when they were young?

And this world was just full of them? At her awe, Luffy impossibly brightened and Salem wished she had shades. The sun was behind her and she had to double-check. 

“The old Salem didn’t like pirates at all, your way better!” Salem gapes at his comment, stunned among the grass. It was strangely flattering in a way that made her feel bad. 

_Is it okay for this kid to just be fine with this? I feel like I should be incredibly concerned. If I told anyone else this, they'd act appropriately, like shriek and ward me off with salt. It counts as possession if the body isn't exactly living, right?_

Still, it was nice to be so accepted. She beamed back. She gets the impression that the original Salem has never smiled so much because her cheeks do nothing but burn around him.

 _He still needs a hat. I’ll just have to find him one._ Turning her head away from him to watch the sea, she reasoned that it wouldn't be too hard. When she found that hat, she would understand the thing that was bothering her memory, it was as simple as that.

Until then, she'd wait. Continue to gather up scraps of a phantom life that wasn't hers anymore, join a family who should be mourning for the girl they lost. 


End file.
